New map shows costs of collisions in Seattle

There's a new tool to help explain the cost of collisions in Seattle. The interactive map shows how many crashes have happened over the past ten years.

Author:
Ted Land

Published:
5:56 PM PDT July 16, 2017

There's a new tool to help explain the cost of collisions in Seattle. The interactive map shows how many crashes have happened over the past 10 years.

“The city does a great job of making all this data available and open and accessible; the problem is it's kind of in this giant spreadsheet-like format that's hard to make sense of,” said Tim Ganter, a web designer and developer who developed the online map.

The website allows users to see not only what kind of crashes occurred, but also the costs of injuries, fatalities, and property damage.

“I just hadn't realized the cost, even as a professional safety advocate, $3.2 billion over ten years is a staggering number,” said Gordon Padelford, the incoming executive director of the group Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, which worked with Ganter to develop the map. They discovered some interesting trends.

“Capitol Hill has more parked cars hit over the past 10 years compared to other neighborhoods,” Ganter said.

The map also shows a constellation of damage around the intersection of Denny and Stewart. The crossroads was recently voted Seattle's worst intersection for pedestrians in an informal poll by a pedestrian safety advocate.

Ganter hopes his map will help educate the city about a persistent problem on nearly every block.

“It would be great if I could see the community use it to help bring change and make their neighborhood safer and more walkable,” Ganter said.